The Israeli Air Force has been starring in the news over the last couple of days with their successful attack on a Syrian “military center”, (which was more likely a missiles convoy to Hezbollah or a chemical weapons depot) and they will probably be the main protagonists in any attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, so it was perfect timing when I received via email (thanks Elchanan) a beautiful short video about the birth of the Israeli Air Force. I thought about keeping this for my good News Friday post tomorrow, but I felt this really needs a post of its own.

Israel owes a huge debt to those brave American ex-servicemen who volunteered, with great risk to their life, limb and freedom, to literally save Israel.

Fascinating. It reminds me of the film “To Cast a Giant Shadow” based on a true story of Americans fighting in the 1948 war. It’s probably not a great film, but it certainly exceeded my expectations, and it has Frank Sinatra playing a pilot.

I noticed that comment too, and was most impressed that it was spoken by someone who says he’s not religious.

The whole film gave me the shivers. These men are so modest, so matter of fact, and yet what they did was quite astonishing. It makes you proud to be a Jew.

(For the Biblically challenged amongst you, those words are a paraphrase of what Mordechai said to Queen Esther in the court of Ahasuerus when they tried to foil wicked Haman’s plot to kill all the Jews in ancient Persia. Sounds like today’s headlines, doesn’t it?)

Great video. One of the guys mentions having four German planes from Czechoslovakia having been put together from various parts. If I recall correctly, they later got 50 planes (Spitfires I believe) also from Czechoslovakia which allowed the IAF to have a proper air fleet.

Interesting how the British trained and armed some of the Arab armies and they still couldn’t destroy Israel. I can well understand how so many see Israel’s survival as a miracle.

It continues until this day. If you consider the odds that Israel has to overcome even today (just think of the sheer numbers of the Arab nations as opposed to Israel’s numbers) there is no real logical explanation.

As for the British, they forgot that their Mandate was to hold Palestine for a Jewish homeland, not to give chunks away to the Arabs and then train those Arabs to defeat those very Jews whose homeland it was, and to whose refugees from the Holocaust Britain closed the doors of that very homeland, sentencing millions to death at the hands of the Nazis.

Indeed I firmly believe the British authorities should apologise for what they have done, especially because they allowed a vast number of Arab economic migrants into Palestine to disrupt the legitimate Jewish migration they were supposed to facilitate, and worse still prevented Jews travelling there during the Holocaust. Imagine the immense difference that would have been made in the Jewish world if they had just kept their word?